Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

Structured societies in which the second mode of solution has importance are termed ‘living.’ It is obvious that a structured society may have more or less ‘life,’ and that there is no absolute gap between ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ societies. For certain purposes, whatever ‘life’ there is in a society may be important; and for other purposes, unimportant.

A structured society in which the second mode is unimportant, and the first mode is important will be termed ‘inorganic.’

In accordance with this doctrine of ‘life,’ the primary meaning of ‘life’ is the origination of conceptual novelty —novelty of appetition. Such origination can only occur in accordance with the Category of Reversion. Thus a society is only to be termed ‘living’ in a derivative sense. A ‘living society’ is one which includes some ‘living occasions.’ Thus a society may be more or less ‘living,’ according to the prevalence in it of living occasions. Also an occasion may be more or less living according to the relative importance of the novel factors in its final satisfaction.

Thus the two ways in which dominant members of structured societies secure stability amid environmental novelties are (i) elimination of diversities of detail, and (41) origination of novelties of conceptual reaction. As the result, there is withdrawal or addition of those details of emphasis whereby the subjective aim directs thep. 157 integration of prehensions in the concrescent phases of dominant members.

SECTION VIII

There is yet another factor in ‘living’ societies which requires more detached analysis. A structured society consists in the patterned intertwining of various nexis with markedly diverse defining characteristics. Some of these nexus are of lower types than others, and some will be of markedly higher types. There will be the ‘subservient’ nexts and the ‘regnant’ nextis within the same structured society. This structured society will provide the immediate environment which sustains each of its sub-societies, subservient and regnant alike. In a living society only some of its nexiis will be such that the mental poles of all their members have any original reactions. These will be its ‘entirely living’ nexiis, and in practice a society is only called ‘living’ when such nexis are regnant. Thus a living society involves nextis which are ‘Inorganic,’ and nextis which are inorganic do not need the protection of the whole ‘living’ society for their survival in a changing eternal environment. Such nexts are societies. But ‘entirely living’ nexis do require such protection, if they are to survive. According to this conjectural theory, an ‘entirely living’ nexus is not a ‘society.’ This is the theory of the animal body, including a unicellular body as a particular instance. A complex inorganic system of interaction is built up for the protection of the ‘entirely living’ nexis, and the originative actions of the living elements are protective of the whole system. On the other hand, the reaction of the whole system provide the intimate environment required by the ‘entirely living’ nexiis. We do not know of any living society devoid of its subservient apparatus of inorganic societies.

‘Physical Physiology’ deals with the subservient inorganic apparatus; and ‘Psychological Physiology’ seeks to deal with ‘entirely living’ nexis, partly in abstractionp. 158 from the inorganic apparatus, and partly in respect to their response to the inorganic apparatus, and partly in regard to their response to each other. Physical Physiology has, in the last century, established itself as a unified science; Psychological Physiology is still in the process of incubation.

It must be remembered that an integral living society, as we know it, not only includes the subservient inorgani¢ apparatus, but also includes many living nexis at least one for each ‘cell.’

SECTION Ix

It will throw light upon the cosmology of the philoso. phy of organism to conjecture some fundamental prin. ciples of Psychological Physiology as suggested by that cosmology and by the preceding conjectures concerning the ‘societies’ of our epoch. These principles are not necessitated by this cosmology; but they seem to be the simplest principles which are both consonant with that cosmology, and also fit the facts.

In the first instance, consider a single living cell. Such a cell includes subservient inorganic societies, such as molecules and electrons. Thus, the cell is an ‘animal body’; and we must presuppose the ‘physical physiology’ proper to this instance. But what of the individual living occasions?

The first question to be asked is as to whether the living occasions, in abstraction from the inorganic occasions of the animal body, form a corpuscular sub-society, so that each living occasion is a member of an enduring entity with its personal order. In particular we may ask whether this corpuscular society reduces to the extreme instance of such a society, namely, to one enduring entity with its one personal order?

The evidence before us is of course extremely slight; but so far as it goes, it suggests a negative answer to both these questions. A cell gives no evidence whatever of a single unified mentality, guided in each of its occap. 159sions by inheritance from its own past. The problem to be solved is that of a certain originality in the response of a cell to external stimulus. The theory of an enduring entity with its inherited mentality gives us a reason why this mentality should be swayed by its own past. We ask for something original at the moment, and we are provided with a reason for limiting originality. Life is a bid for freedom: an enduring entity binds any one of its occasions to the line of its ancestry. The doctrine of the enduring soul with its permanent characteristics is exactly the irrelevant answer to the problem which life presents. That problem is, How can there be originality? And the answer explains how the soul need be no more original than a stone.